Rigorous Honesty, in the search of recovery from gross obesity. Mainly opinion, not advice. Some speculation, some errors, some fiction.
Sugar, grain and processed products are not food. Omega 6 oil and dairy should be mainly avoided.

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Thursday, July 31, 2014

Cravings the bane of any dieter. These are the problem. What causes them? Are these carvings just irrational desires stimulated by willful thinking, physical processes, environmental situations, maladaptive behaviors in response to some emotion, or food addiction like stimulus?

Monday, July 21, 2014

“Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.” —Epicurus

This is similar to AA's "one drink is to many and a 1000 is not enough"

One of the common problems of overeating is alining our will with our needs. It is desire that drives much overeating, desire for more, desire for tasty food, the desire to try some tasty piece of non food.
Learning to control our desire and our wants, and limit them to our needs is a big issue in weight loss.

I think there tips are garbage as is there low fat diet, but then I know that understanding carbohydrate intolerance and control of the will are necessary for recovery. Also stopping cognitive dissonance, like a thinking that ice cream would taste good. There are many eatable manufactured products that are not fredfood.
Carbohydrate intolerance, a phrase coined, I believe, by Phil Maffetone, is an apt descriptor of one of the physical problems. This is a insulin/adrenaline/dopamine/serotonin issue that creates a urge to eat when we overeat on carbohydrates. Phil talks about it here. He provides a method of determining how much carbohydrates are required to provide the effect here.

So how sensitive to carbohydrates am I? Well if I eat only greens, I still crave often. So if it is insulin, proteins can also produce insulin. Protein are digested into peptides, and some peptides are processed further in the liver through glyconeogenesis into glucose. So some meats, pork, especially any processed meats, even sausages, produce insulin. Too much beef or bison, and I am into a craving situation. That is what I live with. Craving is almost impossible to avoid, so how does one live?

This suggests recovery should include at least three separate study areas:
1. Desire adjustment, to moderate our desires. This may be separate or part of belief change, our expectations, our will and wants. Recovery dose not include eating what we want to eat, but rather eating and only wanting what little we should eat.
2. Expanded food and physiological need understanding including concepts like carbohydrate intolerance, food addiction, maladaptive eating, correcting environmental driven cueing, priming, bating and temptation, and understanding the physical food drive issues.
3. Correction of our own thinking to get rid of self bating, and similar cognitive dissonance with recovery.

Saturday, July 19, 2014

In an earlier post I proposed four groups of the causes of overeating as follow:

Physical Problem: genetic or unknown physical, hyperinsulinemia or insulin resistance,
thyroid issues, adrenalin issues, some thing that produces excess hunger
or appetite. These require some sort of physical intervention or
extended mental effort to overcome what is a physical problem being
overcome by mental/ behavioral effort.

Environmental: Near normal people in food rich environment, where there is continuous
temptation. These people must learn to adapt to their environment, or
change their environment to recover.

Maladaptive: May be emotional eating, compulsive eating, obsession driven,
stress, boredom, lonely, tired, whatever. We need to learn real coping
methods for situations, escape from that situation, recognizing there is
no real solution for the situation, (learn acceptance of bullshit
produced by others), whatever. Recovery requires a major change in our belief structure, and attitude change or other psychic adjustment. This could also include the attitude issue, wanting to eat. Desires must be adjusted to match our needs.

Addicts and addiction like issues: There are chemicals within the food that cause a addiction like
behavior, craving, desire, and withdrawal. This addiction may be
behavioral in addition or instead of chemical. Addiction like behavior may also be a food triggering a desire to eat, not specifically the trigger food. Potatoes seem to triggering a craving for more food, likely through insulin overshot, but not specifically potatoes, in my case. Is that physical, or addiction substitution?

Now the reason I bring this up is obesity is the least understood and most common modern condition brought about by development. It need understanding of the overall problem, not just parts. That has been the problem so far in findings a solution. It is not diet, not the cause of overeating, not hyperpalatable refined carbohydrates, but a combination of all things that lead to the problem.

Currently I am reading Food and Addiction (Brownell and Gold). It clearly shows much understanding in many areas but a clear lack of understanding in what is necessary for recovery.
It is not one problem but at least four groups of problems, that I am dealing with, and much misinformation and shotgun solutions to the wrong problems. At the same time, all these issues are so interrelated that it become difficult to separate them out.

I have no food, nutritional, psychological, philosophical, medical, or other related credentials; but then neither do many living with these overeating issues. Some of us seem to recover. Can we produce enough logic to rationally lead ourselves out of the quagmire that we find ourselves in?

The four groups of causes of overeating, Physical, environmental, maladaptive, or addiction, are useful to understand an event. Yesterday, I ate new potatoes from the garden, perhaps 200 grams. Fresh, boiled, little red, robbed from the hills. My god, they tasted good. That should have been the first sign. All evening I craved. This I believe is the physical cause of overeating, likely a insulin short in to my naturally anxiousness body, or is it an adrenalin shot, I do not know. Either way, I have a choice: quit eating potatoes - or - keep on experiencing these eating rushes. So which is it going to be, go against my heritage, and a food that grows well here, or longer life? It should be a simple choice.

But is it only physical caused. I ate a potato. That is food induced change, so it might be grouped as food addiction cause, but the craving was not for more potatoes, it was for food in general. I did not have any "high fat" food available, but I guess I could have made a salad with a manufactured oil dressing. Oh well, it is morning of a new day, the cravings are gone, slept off, I guess.

Is it over production, or just production of unnecessary, which results in refeeding?

Eating carbohydrates, food in general produces endorphins which, through sensor cells regulate our eating. Which is my issue? To much adrenaline? Too few endorphins? Or a problem seeing the endorphins? As Steve Parker has suggested, D2 sensor issue.

Caffeine, sugar and alcohol drive endorphins up, but adaption makes us require more to have the same effect.

Thursday, July 3, 2014

In reading old Roman philosophy, there are warning that seeking pleasure from food, eating leads to ruin (which rune I am not sure) due to soft living. Is that part of today's obesity problem? Is it the pleasure seeking that is one of the roots of the problem?

Ideally food is just energy, required by the body. Epecurious noted that hunger is the best sauce, that even barley porridge tastes wonderful after a fast.

How many time have I heard " I don't want that ___________ for lunch." Perhaps hunger would change attitudes?

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

History is written by the survivors, and usually by the victors. This puts a biases on everything. In talking to the other archery groundhog day coaches last night, it became apparent that there are those high school students that learn and those that game the system. This two separate learning philosophy require different styles of presentation; well suggest that there should be two separate styles. Is the same true of life and weight loss? I am not talking about the fat vs carbohydrates issue... that now is a non issue, but rather in learning style. Do we heavy people learn better in a literary/numerical style than the typical social interaction that we were raised in? I grew up in an obese family, and never learned good eating habits, just habits. Are these deeply intrenched habits that are causing me the issues that I have today? Is it a trained in belief of what is food, and how much? Is it a trained in concept that I should eat when hungry? Or that I should eat at least three time each day? Perhaps the default condition of humans at constant weight is to be hungry to give us motivation. Polyphagia is a bitch.

The objective of the two groups of students are quite different. One group is there to soak up knowledge, the marks are secondary. The other group is there to get the best mark with the least amount of work. OK, those guys make better marketers, salesman, scam artists, even executives, sight shooters, compound junkies, while the information collecting types become the engineers, medical types, the technical people and instinctive or barebow shooters. Do we have the same split in our population with respect to adopting a diet system strategy? If this is true the wordy people, those that know less hard information, are likely being heard the loudest. If this is correct, it is no wonder that weight loss is so difficult, and maintenance even harder.

The philosophy of going our own way, vs going along with the population or culture, family, becomes important. I never was much for following directions anyway, and when the direction are not clear, all I want is an address. In my previous life, I just hated people who will not give an address to job sites, just directions. Not only are most direction crap, those people are either control freaked or instinctual types, who give thing like "just before the red house turn left" land marks, and when I see the red house, I am past the corner, or there are multiple red houses. They also cannot accept that their direction are poor, but it is all my fault as I am male and fat.

Now what does this all to do with the views of the victor? Well I have noticed that along with weight loss comes an attitude change. It is that attitude change that is being kept secret, not talked about, ignored. It is that attitude change that is critical to success in maintenance. What exactly that attitude change is is not necessarily apparent, but it must include some form of fixity of food philosophy, else we get pushed back into our old ways. One way to not be pushed around is to get out of the herd of humans. What interests the mob does not interest me, and what interest me does not interest the mob. We have too many choices, I think. History is always written by the survivors.